Postponed Tokyo Olympics to open July 23 next year

TOKYO
The Tokyo Olympics will begin on July 23 next year, organisers said on Monday, after the coronavirus forced the historic decision to postpone the Games until 2021. The announcement comes less than a week after the organisers were forced to delay the Games under heavy pressure from athletes and sports federations as the global outbreak worsened. ‘The Olympics will be held from July 23 toAugust 8, 2021. The Paralympics will be held from August 24 to September 5,’Tokyo 2020 chief Yoshiro Mori told reporters at a hastily arranged evening news conference. Only hours earlier, Mori had said he expected a decision from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) during the course of the week. But on Monday evening, he said an emergency teleconference had been held with the IOC and the date finalised. ‘We agreed that the timing of the event will be in summer as originally planned, considering the coronavirus… and a certain amount of time needed for preparations, selection and qualification of athletes,’ he added. In a statement, the IOC said the new dates would give health authorities and organisers ‘the maximum time to deal with the constantly changing landscape and the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.’ The decision would also cause ‘minimum’ disruption to the international sports calendar, the body said. The Tokyo 2020 Olympics were due to open on July 24 this year and run for 16 days, but the coronavirus pandemic forced the first peace-time postponement of the Games. The IOC and Japan had for weeks insisted the show could go on but the rapid spread of COVID-19 prompted growing disquiet among athletes and sporting federations. The Olympics was the highestprofile sporting casualty of the coronavirusthat has wiped out fixtures worldwide and all but halted professional sport. There was some speculation that Japanese organisers could take advantage of the blank canvas to shift the Games to spring, avoiding the heat of the Tokyo summer that had been their main concern before coronavirus struck. Due to the heat, the marathon has been moved to Sapporo, a city some 800 kilometres (500 miles)tothe north of Tokyo where the weather is cooler even at the height of summer. The postponement has handed organisers the ‘unprecedented’ task of rearranging an event seven years in the making, and Tokyo 2020 CEO Toshiro Muto has admitted the additional costs will be ‘massive’. According to the latest budget, the Games were due to cost $12.6 billion, shared between the organising committee, the government of Japan and Tokyo city. However, that number is hotly contested with a muchpublicised government audit suggesting the central government was spending several times that amount — on items organisers claim are only tangentially related to the Olympics. The postponement affects every aspect of the organisation — hotels, ticketing, venues and transport being among the major headaches. Hotels have had to cancel bookings, dealing them a bitter blow at a time when tourism is already being hammered by the coronavirus.—APP